The preservation of aroma streams is recognized throughout the food art as being extremely important to the quality of food products. For example, in the soluble coffee art, extensive development work has been done to recover aroma streams otherwise lost during processing. However, aroma-containing streams from roast and ground coffee are generally extremely dilute and require significant concentration to permit their effective use.
Concentration of aroma-containing streams is commonly performed in a low temperature vacuum distillation column requiring a number of trays or stages to effect a desired increase in aroma concentration. It is not uncommon using existing art procedures to contemplate a great number of trays to effect the desired concentration of aromas, which then allows addback of the aroma-containing stream to a concentrated extract without significant dilution of the extract stream.
A need therefore exists for a process which improves the economics of distillation while at the same time providing for efficient separation of aroma constituents as may be desired in a specific application.